The Furor Over the Confederate Flag

I have no delusion that people are waiting on the edge of their seats to find out my opinion about Governor Haley's decision to call for the removal of the Confederate Battle Flag from the South Carolina Statehouse grounds. But I do hope that my thoughts will contribute something to the conversation. My position is (naturally) nuanced. I have neither a strong affection nor repulsion for the flag. In fact, I had ancestors fighting on both sides of the war, so in that regard, I'm almost ambivalent about the flag; that being the case, I believe I can see the sentiment behind both sides of the argument. Maybe that puts me in a fairly unique position to comment on it. Or maybe it disqualifies me. Either way, I'll provide my thoughts and leave it to the reader to judge. 

I regret the timing of the revival of this issue in the sense that, at least for a time, it diverted attention from the nine people whose brutal murder provided the impetus for it. I also regret that bringing the flag into the conversation had the effect of politicizing a very real and personal tragedy. Nonetheless, the issue has been raised and it must be dealt with. I wonder if perhaps dealing with the flag issue is part of the healing process. Either way, I do hope that it can be resolved in a manner that will preserve the unity that has emerged within our state in dealing with the tragedy in Charleston.

Secondly, I want to point out the fallacy that I've seen most prominently since the national conversation has turned to the Confederate Flag. Sadly, there are still those, I hope few in number, who raise the flag as a symbol of white supremacy and hate (those who do so only demonstrate that they are "superior" to no one), but not everyone has this motive. Just because someone supports the flag's presence on the Statehouse grounds does not mean they are a racist. To claim otherwise is, well, intolerant. Before addressing the the flag itself, I wish to deal with this issue.

WHY SOME SUPPORT THE FLAG

One major reason that some southerners revere the flag is that it is a means of honoring their ancestors who fought in the Civil War. The soldiers who fought on either side of the war were not all evil; most were individuals who were called upon by their respective countries to defend their homes. Probably most of the soldiers in the Confederate rank and file never considered their struggle to be about slavery or any other such issue. Obviously, as in any war, some were cruel with cruel intentions, but not all. As in any war, many died, leaving widows and fatherless children, many were horribly maimed, and the rest carried emotional scars with them for the rest of their lives. For their descendants to want to honor their memories is not only understandable, but laudable. Family honor is strong in the South, just as it is in many other parts of the country. We can argue about whether the flag is an appropriate means for them to do that, but the sentiment here is one of honor, not one of hatred.

A second reason for revering the flag among some southerners is because they view it as a symbol of identification with the South. (Before those in other parts of the country dismiss this, all parts of the nation practice similar sectional identification, albeit in different ways and with, obviously, different symbols.) Again, whether this is an appropriate symbol for representing southern pride can be debated, but impugning all who hold this view as hateful or as supporting the negative aspects of the region's history is not correct.

A third reason that some southerners revere the flag is as a symbol of states' rights, which, rightly understood, is not in any way a racial issue; I will discuss this more further down. Yet again, whether the Confederate flag is a good symbol for states' rights can be debated. While I am an ardent supporter of states' rights, I would personally question whether this flag is the best symbol for this purpose. 

SOME HISTORICAL CONTEXT

One historic note that I've noticed a lot of people, particularly in the news outlets, get wrong: the Battle Flag that is the focus of the current furor is not the "Stars and Bars". That nickname refers to the first national flag of the Confederacy; this is what that flag looked like. The flag currently flying on the Statehouse grounds was never a national flag. That, by the way, will be relevant to a point that I will address later.

Some have taken the position that the Civil War was never about slavery, or at least not primarily so. To be sure, there may have been other issues involved (for example, tariffs that disproportionately economically impacted the southern states), but one only need read the Declaration of Causes of the various Confederate states for secession as well as speeches by Confederate president Jefferson Davis (here are two from Davis when he was a US Senator before the war), or numerous other documents from other prominent Confederates to see that slavery was indeed a major issue, if not the preeminent issue, leading to secession and ultimately to war: The states claimed the "right" to determine for themselves whether slavery should be legal within their borders rather than that determination being made at the federal level.

In the century following the end of the war and Reconstruction, former Confederate states practiced the wholesale institutionalized repression of blacks in the form of laws such as Jim Crow, which required racial segregation, and voter suppression laws such as white primaries and the "eight-box" law (which required ballots for separate offices to be placed in the the appropriate box in order to be counted, which was designed to prevent votes cast by blacks, who were largely illiterate at the time, from being counted). Given this history, one can certainly understand why many blacks, and others, view the Confederate flag, which was the banner under which these laws were carried out, with disdain (ostensibly, the flag was first placed above the Statehouse dome by Governor Fritz Hollings in 1962 as a protest against desegregation). 

This gets to why I don't see the Confederate flag as a good symbol for the cause of states' rights. For a century, Jim Crow and similar laws were defended as being within the purview of states: the "right" of the state to determine for itself who within its borders can enjoy liberty and the rights of citizenship and who cannot. This created an unfortunate association in the minds of many between the issue of states' rights and segregation that persists today; the Tea Party for example is frequently panned by the Left as being racist, not because it advocates any racially discriminatory policies, but because they advocate for states' rights (note how a quote by Sarah Palin is characterized in this 2010 article on the Tea Party). Use of the Confederate Battle Flag, the symbol used by the segregationists, as a symbol of states' rights only serves to perpetuate this association.

However, the very purpose behind states' rights (i.e. seeking to preserve the Federalist system established by the Framers of the US Constitution) is to provide a check and balance against the power of the federal government and to diffuse power to the state and local level for one purpose: to preserve personal liberty against the overreach of a too-powerful national government. The idea, as outlined for example by James Madison in Federalist #46, was that such diffusion of power placed government closer to the people where they could have greater influence and thus prevent a distant, impersonal national government from becoming oppressive. Therefore, using states' rights as a shield for laws limiting people of a certain race from exercising their rights of citizenship is completely antithetical to the very purpose of states' rights.

STAY OR GO?

One factor that must be taken into account in this debate is this: There are two flags currently flying over the Statehouse dome (since the Battle Flag was removed to its current location in 2000): the Flag of the United States and the South Carolina state flag. These are flags of sovereign political entities - the nation of which we are a part and the state of which the Statehouse serves as the capitol. These flags therefore have special standing to fly on Statehouse grounds; in a sense, they kind of have to be there. This is why the argument that it would be hypocritical to remove the Confederate flag and not the US flag, which flew over a nation that allowed slavery for much longer than did the Confederate flag, is not valid. The US flag is the flag of our nation. The Confederate Battle Flag is not, nor has it ever been, a national flag, and the nation which it represented on the battle field no longer in exists. As such, while this fact alone does not exclude its being flown on Statehouse grounds (although I did believe this was one reason why it was correct to remove it from the Statehouse dome 15 years ago), the Battle Flag can be removed without regard to the US and SC flags. 

It's a funny thing about how a single symbol can represent vastly different things to different people. Obviously, such things can be taken to the ridiculous extreme: the past few weeks have seen the attempted wholesale scrubbing of all Confederate symbols from the public arena, including the discontinuation of computer games containing Confederate flags by Apple (which partially relented a few days later), or the recent announcement of TV Land's cancelling of "Dukes of Hazzard" reruns due to the image of a Confederate flag on the car used in the program. We cannot erase the past by eradicating all reminders of it, nor should we wish to. Edmund Burke's famous statement seems to apply: "Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it." 

So the "what's next" concern is certainly a valid concern, but we cannot use that as an excuse not to deal with an issue. So we must be careful keep the current debate on focus. The question at hand is not whether we should scrub all reminders of the past; it is about, and only about, whether the Confederate flag should fly at the seat of our state's government. The relevant question here is not "what does the flag mean to me?", but what is the flag's actual historical meaning and does its flying at the Statehouse constitute official state endorsement, intentional or implicit, of those policies that the flag was used to represent throughout its history? 

Most people are aware of our past sins; all too aware, in fact. South Carolina still bears the stigma of its past in the eyes of many - I believe unjustly so, given the progress that the state has made just during my own lifetime. Sadly, much of the nation is unaware that, regardless of whether the Confederate flag is on the Statehouse grounds or not, the state is now far different from what it was in those days. Perhaps the real tragedy of the Confederate flag's presence there is that it serves to perpetuate this image of the state as a haven for institutionalized racism. This is not the South Carolina that we have seen since the tragedy in Charleston, and it is not the South Carolina that I love and am proud to call my home. This is reason enough in my eyes to justify removing the flag. It is time for our state to move forward to a thriving future, not to linger in a checkered past.

Newsweek Decides that Christianity is Delusional

I ran across this topic yesterday morning and immediately decided that it called for a fairly detailed response. Ergo, welcome to my first blog post of 2015. Happy New Year!

Newsweek's cover story for its January 2, 2015 issue (the online version of the story is dated December 23, 2014) is entitled "The Bible: So Misunderstood It's a Sin", by Kurt Eichenwald. The scholarship in this article is abysmal; it essentially amounts to a hatchet job on biblical Christianity, but his arguments are largely based on uninformed popular misconceptions or superficial reading of various passages. 

First of all, I will begin with one thing that the author does, unfortunately get right: his claim that many Christians are biblically illiterate is true. It has long been one of my greatest complaints that far too many believers in our time have at best a weak understanding of what it is that they claim to believe and why. This failure comes both on the part of the individual, who neglects reading their Bible or studying biblical teaching, and the church, which has by and large fallen woefully short in what I believe is one of its core biblical functions: passing on and preserving sound doctrine. Too many professing Christians have a very superficial faith built on tradition and emotion and not on what the Bible actually says. His criticism in the conclusion of the article that "too many [Christians] seem to read John Grisham novels with greater care than they apply to the book they consider to be the most important document in the world" rings sadly true. I'm sorry to have to agree with Eichenwald on this point, so far as this goes. However, that is probably the only thing from this article upon which I and the author will agree.

Eichenwald essentially presents a laundry list of things that he claims are "wrong" in the Bible, or things that have been misunderstood by Christians. As such, I believe the most effective way to present my responses is with a numbered list addressing each item more or less in the order that it appears in the article. This is a long article, so get some coffee and a comfortable chair... this could take a while. I'll try not to ramble on too much (like I'm doing now).

1. First, two general observations: 

    a.) Aside from the one-sided approach of only citing liberal scholars ("liberal" here referring to theological liberals, not necessarily political)... the few that he bothers citing... and disregarding any dissenting opinions, pretty much all of the author's appeals to "most biblical scholars agree" are put forth without justification and/or are unattributed. (In fairness, I'm not going to go to the effort to get citations for all of my "scholars say" statements, but then I'm not writing for Newsweek.)

    b.) Eichenwald, like many liberal scholars, as well as the so-called "New Atheists", frequently seems to be committing the fallacy of assuming that many of these items somehow escaped the attention of Christians over the many years since the Bible has existed. The Bible is in fact one of the most scrutinized books in modern history. It has been examined by theologians, historians, and rhetorical critics for centuries. Its meaning and historical reliability have been questioned and defended many times, and yet somehow it falls to a 21st century news magazine to provide an expose on how the Bible isn't really what we think it is. Essentially, this amounts to a rehashing of old arguments that have long since been answered or discredited.  

2. Eichenwald starts out by comparing the modern Bible to the children's game "telephone". For those who do not remember this game from kindergarten, telephone is where a phrase is passed around in a circle by whispering in your neighbor's ear, then she whispers the phrase into the next child's ear. By the time the phrase has completed the circle, it usually is completely different from when it started due to little differences in how each person in the circle says it to the next. 

  This is applied to the Bible in that, for centuries prior to invention of the printing press, scripture was hand-copied. This would provide plenty of opportunity for errors to compound, ultimately creating a very different product than the original text. Additionally, Eichenwald claims that this is compounded by the translation process where a translation is made from another translation, so that the modern translations that we use are very divergent from the original text. Without knowing more about how modern translations are made, this sounds like a valid criticism. 

  Where this criticism is wrong is that modern translations, such as the New King James (NKJV), the New International Version (NIV), and the New American Standard Bible (NASB), make use of the earliest available manuscripts in the original languages, thereby avoiding the "translation of a translation" issue, or even much of the potential for copy errors. It appears that Eichenwald is under the impression that modern translations merely "translate" the King James into modern English. This is not the case. Any copy of one of the new translations contains a preface that explains the translation process, which Eichenwald clearly didn't read. 

I should also note here that, while we do not have the original manuscripts of the New Testament, we do have very early manuscripts, some dating to less than 100 years of the originals. There are also references in other literature contemporary with the Apostles that reference the Gospels and other NT books that let us know about when they were actually written and verifying their authorship. 

  Regarding the copy error issue, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (copies of Old Testament texts had been sealed up and preserved in a cave since about the time of Christ) in the 1940s demonstrates that the copy error problem may not be as large an issue as Eichenwald makes it out to be. The texts in the Dead Sea Scrolls (which, incidentally, are also used as source material for modern translations) contain minor differences from later texts due to copy errors, but these do not change the central meaning of the text itself. This provides grounds for some degree of confidence regarding the reliability of the copy process. 

Finally, he is correct regarding the issues involved in translating from an ancient language to a modern language, but, again, this is no new revelation. This is why theology and divinity students are taught biblical Greek and Hebrew in graduate school. (Incidentally, he makes frequent references to the Living Bible when giving examples of where he believes translators got it wrong; he apparently is unaware that the Living Bible is a paraphrase.)

3. Eichenwald's account of the Council of Nicea is essentially a work of fiction. C. FitzSimons Allison gives an excellent account of the events leading up to the councils of Nicea and Constantinople, as well as the results, in what is probably one of my favorite books on theology. Numerous other books, including some that came out following the surge in popularity of the Gnostic writings surrounding the screen adaptation of Dan Brown's "Da Vinci Code", also address this. One that I have read is by Erwin Lutzer, which, unlike this article, cites its sources. 

4. Next, he claims that certain of our favorite passages in the Gospels were not part of the original text but were "made up" and added to the text by Medieval scholars with an agenda. I'm not familiar with the claim he makes regarding the story of the woman caught in adultery in the Gospel of John, so I will defer addressing that until I've had time to do a little research. 

  However, his second example of the last few verses of Mark is another demonstration of his poor scholarship, because the fact that those verses are not in the earliest manuscripts is stated in the footnotes of many modern translations. I've read discussions of this in several sources, including, if I recall correctly, a pretty simple teacher's guide that my church used when I was teaching a Sunday school class. Eichenwald claims that the book of Mark ends "awkwardly" and excludes several important events following the Ressurrection. In fact, the ending is widely believed to have been lost somehow; scholars are not sure how. It is widely recognized (if not universally accepted) that the last few verses are essentially a summary of material pulled from the other Gospels that were added later. There is no scandal or subterfuge there as Eichenwald claims, because it is widely known; however, there is nothing there that contradicts other scripture. 

5. Just in time for Christmas, Eichenwald next posits that the gospels of Matthew and Luke provide contradictory accounts of Jesus' birth. From this he concludes that the visit of the Magi described in Matthew never occurred (this is kind of a non-sequitor, and he provides no further justification for this conclusion). 

  This claim that the two accounts are contradictory makes no sense when one actually compares the two passages. This type of criticism of scripture is common, however, where two accounts are given for an event. Just because the accounts are different, it does not mean that they are contradictory. In this case, Luke gives a more detailed description of Jesus' birth and the events leading up to it, while Matthew picks up the story after Jesus is already born. Although the popular image of the Manger Scene we display at Christmas shows the Magi standing around the manger with the shepherds, a careful reading of the passage in Matthew indicates that Jesus was between one to two years old when the Magi arrived. The two passages are therefore not contradictory, but simply describe two separate events associated with Jesus' birth and early life. 

  He provides similar criticism of the texts regarding Jesus' trial before Pilate. Again, because the accounts are different does not mean that they are contradictory. One simply provides more detail than the other. 

  Many (I would even say most) instances where this type of criticism is made regarding different scriptural accounts of a single event involve a simple difference in emphasis or perspective. For example, if you asked me about a trip to Orlando I took a few years ago with a friend, I may say that we went to Universal and ate at Bob Marley's; if you go ask my friend what we did in Orlando, he may say we spent a day at Epcot. Our two accounts are different, but they don't contradict. In fact, we did both of these things on our trip. We just each chose to emphasize different things in our account based upon what stood out to us from our perspective.

6. He next points out the seeming contradiction of Jesus being the Son of God and the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah being the "son of David". The reasoning goes: if Joseph was a descendant of King David (as the Gospels say that he was), but Jesus was not Joseph's biological son, then Jesus was not a descendant of David. 

  Unlike some of the other issues brought up in this article, this one is actually a pretty good question that a lot of people, including believers, find themselves wondering about. Eichenwald unwittingly stumbles upon the answer, although he is unaware of it. He points out that the two genealogies given for Jesus in Matthew and Luke trace his lineage back to David. Then he says that it would make sense if Mary were descended from David, because that would then make Jesus a descendant of David. 

  It apparently escaped his notice, however, that the two genealogies are different (I was surprised by this as I expected him to point this out as a contradiction). Both trace back to David, but one has the lineage coming through Solomon, the other is through David's other son Nathan. In fact, the genealogy given in Matthew is Joseph's and the one in Luke is widely accepted as Mary's genealogy (Joseph being referred to as the "son of Heli" probably means that he was the son-in-law). Here is a brief but pretty good treatment on the two genealogies.

7. The two creation account idea that the author posits is another one that is fairly common, so I won't criticize Eichenwald on this one. The thought is that Genesis 1 and 2 each contain a separate and contradictory account of creation. However, actually comparing the two chapters, one can see that the second chapter is essentially a rehashing of certain details from the first chapter (a partial summary of sorts) with some elaboration. For example, in the first chapter, it says that God created the man and woman, but in the second chapter it gives the details of that creation. Another example is that in the first chapter, it says that God separated the waters above from the waters below (I'm paraphrasing), which I interpret as describing creation of the water cycle. In the second chapter, it describes mists rising from the earth and watering the ground (again, a description of the water cycle, although some people interpret that verse differently). I believe that a clear reading of the text justifies viewing the two chapters as complementary rather than contradictory. 

8. The criticism of the account of Noah again shows poor readership on Eichenwald's part. One issue that he finds "strange" is the different number of days given for the length of the flood and for how long Noah and his family were in the ark (Genesis 7-8). If he had given the text a careful reading (taking into account that phraseology for ancient texts is a little different from how a modern text would read), he probably would not have been so confused. The text indicates that the flood water rose for 40 days, it remained on the surface (or at least was not perceived as receding) for 150 days, and that it took a year for the water to recede sufficiently for them to disembark. 

9. From here, he continues on to matters of interpretation and further claims of forgery (including a claim that 1 Timothy was not authored by Paul, which he makes little effort to substantiate, and a rather puzzling claim that the doctrine in 1 Timothy more closely resembles Gnostic doctrine, which is utter nonsense). I won't get bogged down in disputing each of his claims regarding interpretation in this post, because this is somewhat of a digression from the main thesis of the article.

Eichenwald wraps up the article with by claiming: "This examination is not an attack on the Bible or Christianity", but that claim runs contrary to everything in the article that comes before it. This is a work of pure sophistry that makes little effort to conceal its bias.